Critique wanted

[kckluge]

The problem is EVA is just a transcription, the 'k' 'a' 'p' etc. are just characters assigned more or less at random to each Voynich glyph. They do not pretend to represent 'real' phonemes and, even if VMS is a phonetic transcription of some language (which it might actually be, who knows) it would be an incredible coincidence if EVA happened to choose the right phonemes by sheer luck.

Ie. EVA 'shedy' - 'chedy' - 'opchedy' could have instead been transliterated 'puast' 'guast' and 'erguast', or 'klira' 'blira' 'soklira' or anything else really, so I fear that trying to build on EVA 'phonetics' is a waste of time. 

More "less" than "more" at random -- a 'y' kinda-sorta looks like a '9' without a closed top, a 'd' kinda-sorta looks like an '8' with the upper loop squished, an 'l' kinda-sorta looks like a cursive lower-case 'e' but stretched, an 'e' kinda-sorta looks like a 'c', but turned into an 'e' so it's a vowel, etc. 

Unfortunately the original sin here is the reason for the kinda-sorta's, which was a questionable belief on the part of EVA's creators that there was some sort of virtue in making EVA pronounceable. Per Rene @ You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., "The basic Eva alphabet was chosen such that the transliterated text is almost pronouncible. This excellent idea from Gabriel was not to be able to 'speak Voynichese', but to make it very easy for the human brain to recognise and remember transliterated words." Ignoring the bludgeon adjective "excellent" there, while it may make it easier to *remember* transliterated words I question whether it makes it easier to *recognize* them. Unless you're an experienced user of EVA, I really doubt it's easier to recognize "opchedy" on a scanned page image than it is to recognize "oqjctc89" (the Frogguy equivalent).

The outcome of that design decision was this latest in a whole string of such misunderstandings of what the EVA transcription is/means. Had they just stayed with Frogguy as an alternative to Currier/Bennett/etc., I doubt anyone looking at "oqjctc89" would have been lured down this garden path.